Mental Health Awareness Week – Painting Our World In Silver

During Mental Health Awareness week, it’s important that as a charity we reflect on our mission statement, and remind ourselves on how we are constantly striving towards our goal of helping to fight loneliness in the older generation. As we know, loneliness can greatly impact the older generation. A lack of social contact and regular meaningful interactions with other people can lead people to not talk properly to another human being for months on end. The links between this lack of interaction and the development of various mental health issues, such as depression or potentially even the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, are very well documented. As a result, people who are struggling with loneliness can very often be drawn into a vicious cycle of loneliness and mental health issues, demonstrated by mental health charity, MIND.

Loneliness is a very real issue that can affect us all at any age, but members of the older generation are especially at risk. Traumatic events that occur more frequently in an older person’s life, such as the loss of a loved one or friend, or a growing lack of mobility and contact with social groups can quickly develop into a state of chronic loneliness; where mental health issues can greatly occur, or cause the struggles or issues that they are already facing to become much more severe.

The theme this year for Mental Health Awareness Week is ‘Thriving or Surviving’, and the Foundation’s report into the nation’s mental health reveals the current state of mental health in the UK, and the steps that we can take to improve it, and help our families, friends and members of our community to understand what can cause these problems. Constantly, Painting Our World In Silver is aiming to combat the loneliness in the elderly members of our community. By putting on fun, engaging and social monthly get-togethers we are bringing people together to tackle the issue of loneliness in the older generation and prevent mental health problems at their source, with the aim of helping their mental health thrive throughout their older years. If you’d like to find out more about the work that we do here at Silver, visit our About Us page, or our Gallery showcasing our previous get-togethers. Please visit the Mental Health Foundation website, to see how you can get involved to help the UK’s mental health thrive.

If you feel like you’d like to talk about your mental health, please have a look at this: